Company fined after workers are made sick by exposure to toxic material.
Hazardous materials remediation workers removing mercury from a General Electric site suffered mercury exposure earlier this year and the contractor that employed them is to blame, according to a federal investigation.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Environmental Remediation Services Inc. of Schenectady, fining the company $142,000, according to an OSHA press release issued Wednesday.
OSHA Albany area director Robert Garvey said in a statement that Environmental Remediation failed to control mercury exposures and to implement measures to lessen exposures despite complaints.
“Particularly disturbing is the fact that company managers knowingly refused to perform personal exposure monitoring of employees most likely to have the highest exposure levels,” Garvey said. “Had the monitoring been done, managers could have identified overexposures and mitigated or prevented them from occurring in the first place. Instead, these employees were needlessly sickened while simply doing their jobs,” Garvey said.
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